What It Sounds Like

As grains sort inside a schist

An ancient woodland indicator called dark dog’s mercury

River like liquid shale

And white-tipped black lizard-turds on the blue wall

For a loss that every other loss fits inside

Picking a mole until it bleeds

As the day heaves forward on faked determinations

If it’s not all juxtaposition, she asked, what is the binding agent?

Creepy always to want to pin words on “the emotional experience”

Azure hoplia cockchafer, the caddisworm, the bee-louse, blister beetle, assassin bug

The recriminations swarm around sunset

When it was otherwise quiet all the way around

You who were given a life, what did you make of it?